S.F.S. has acted as an advisor and/or has received speaker’s fees from Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bayer, BMS, Cepheid, Ferring, Ipsen, Janssen, Lilly, MSD, Olympus, Pfizer, Pierre Fabre, Richard Wolf, Roche, Sanochemia, Sanofi and Urogen, and holds patents for a method of determining prognosis after therapy for prostate cancer, methods of determining prognosis after therapy for bladder cancer, prognostic methods for patients with prostatic disease, and soluble Fas urinary marker for the detection of bladder transitional cell carcinoma (WO2004027432A3, WO2004027432A2, WO02099114A3, WO02099114A2 and WO02068960A1). The other authors declare no competing interests.